


such gardens are not made

by withoutpants



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Home, M/M, Nesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1498009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutpants/pseuds/withoutpants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendan starts a garden in Montreal. Alex helps.</p><p>Or: If nothing else, Brendan is all root.</p>
            </blockquote>





	such gardens are not made

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Megan for the read over, though no thanks to her for encouraging me about hockey generally. I don't need encouragement. 
> 
> This is 9k of nesting fluff with plants.

Alex has been in Montreal for about four years when Brendan brings it up for the first time.

“I’m going to make a garden box,” Brendan says while they’re playing Mario Kart. Alex only manages not to drive Yoshi off the side of the road because he is maybe a touch overly-competitive, and not even a completely out-of-the-blue statement like that from his best friend is going to make him lose his fourth race in a row. 

“What,” he responds gruffly, not tearing his eyes from the screen. 

“A garden box,” Brendan repeats cheerfully. “You know, one of those boxes with soil and plants and everything. I’m going to make one. There’s space in the courtyard in my building and I asked my landlord and everything. He says I can go for it if I really want to.”

Alex grunts in reply and then elbows Brendan in the gut, using the momentary distraction to speed ahead of Princess Peach.

“Fucker!” Brendan growls, and Alex expects that literal nonsense to be the last of that.

\---

It is not the last of that.

\---

Once the snow clears for what should reasonably be for good, Brendan starts preparing to install a raised box in the courtyard of his apartment building. He rarely enlists anyone’s help, but every once in a while he’ll drag Alex over. Sometimes Alex watches as Brendan hems and haws over the exact corner to put the box in, or helps him try to maneuver the wood he’s bought--unwieldy and knotted and lumpy--into a proper box shape that won’t leak soil all over the ground, or goes to buy seeds with him. Mostly, though, the only signs that Brendan is gardening are the tall rubber boots that appear in his apartment and the gardening supplies piling up next to (and on top of) his hockey gear in his entryway closet. Alex wouldn’t even know these things except they spend a possibly unreasonable amount of time together, still living in each other’s pockets even though now they have places to call their own. Or, well, Brendan does for certain and Alex does sort of.

Alex is an adult. He can admit that he was reticent to move out of his parents’ house and, once he made the leap, still a bit hesitant to decorate the place like he actually lived there. As far as he can tell, this is a curse of many hockey players. Almost every single guy on the team has a state-of-the-art entertainment center, a gym, a bathroom, and maybe a well-stocked (if mostly unused) kitchen, but the rest of their houses they don’t seem to much bother with. The kitchen in Alex’s house may make his mom grimace whenever she visits but he can certainly feed himself with it, and the rest of his place is at least full enough that he can have the guys over without feeling too embarrassed. Still, even as a guy who spent most of his childhood moving around from half-furnished house to half-furnished house (or maybe because of that), it doesn’t feel like enough to him. So Alex is slowly filling the place so that it doesn’t feel vacuous, like he’s bumping around in his loneliness. Not that he’s lonely. He likes his solitude, mostly.

Brendan, though. Brendan nests. He’s got a smallish kitchen that’s not too fancy, a manageable number of utensils and plates and pots and pans that he uses pretty frequently and nothing extravagant but a stand mixer he claims his mom insisted on buying. The thing about Brendan’s kitchen, though, is that it’s not just outfitted with utilitarian _things_. He has pictures on the fridge, a calendar on the wall, a shelf with cooking books and a journal filled with recipes from his mother, a table that’s well used and full of clutter, and sensible pens and pads and post-it notes like no single guy Alex has ever met. In the living room there’s a killer entertainment setup, yes, and he has his own stationary bike on top of the amazing gym in his building, but what he calls his common space is also full of books, art that he actually seems to actively enjoy, and pictures of his family and his juniors team and the Habs. His bedroom is messy in a way that reminds Alex of his sister’s old room: full of everything, and everything used and, though he feels stupid even thinking it, loved. 

Brendan likes his little apartment so much he stays in Montreal over the summers with only a week or two to go visit his family, like the guys who’ve been in Montreal for years and have made families there already. But Brendan, by himself, has carved a space that feels so incredibly _Brendan_ that it’s more like home than Alex’s own little house. Alex even went out of his way to buy something permanent when he moved to his own place, but Brendan is the one with the home. It’s fitting, then, Alex supposes, that Brendan is going about tying himself to his building even more: filling it with things that need him, that don’t move easily, that root and thrive.

If nothing else, Brendan is all root.

\---

After practice on an unseasonably sunny Montreal day, Brendan doesn’t so much let Alex into his apartment after texting him incessantly to come over for two straight hours as fling open his door and hurl a pair of gardening gloves at Alex’s face.

“You’re helping me plant,” he announces.

“Oh, come on, practices was killer today,” Alex bitches, but Brendan merely smiles too-sweetly and hands him a trowel. 

“Think of it as some prolonged cool down. We’ll even stretch out afterwards, grumpy.”

“I’m too old for this,” Alex insists, but Brendan is already pushing him back out the door and towards the elevator, his own gloves and trowel and plastic bag of seed packets in hand.

“I’m older than you, and it’s not like we’re Prusty’s age or anything.”

“I’m going to tell him you said that.” 

“What’s he going to do, wave his cane at me?” Brendan replies, grinning the little mischievous grin he gets when he thinks he’s on his best chirping game. Alex groans loudly but follows, and when they get down to the courtyard Alex is only half-surprised to see that the bed looks like an actual raised box now, the sort he remembers vaguely from Milan where space was at a premium. Brendan lines the seed bags up next to the box along with a bunch of little bulbs he must have put in the courtyard earlier in the day, and then he sits cross-legged on the ground facing the box and pats the spot next to him.

“What?” Alex asks as he sits down, pulling on his gloves and frowning a bit. 

“We’re going to visualize my awesome cold season vegetable garden,” Brendan says enthusiastically.

“Wow. Sounds like a non-stop fun extravaganza.”

“Shut up, Chucky. Listen. This is a pretty small box and I think I’m gonna make another one next off day, so for right now we’ll save the arugula and lettuce spinach seeds, since all of those can be planted a little later, probably, and I don’t want to keep those onion starts hanging around. So I think today you’re going to sow the kale seeds in two rows on the north side of the bed and I’ll plant onions in two rows in the middle. Then in the southern part of the bed one side will get three half-rows of carrots, ‘cause those can be planted pretty close together, and on the other side we’ll sow peas today. And then when I have time, I’ll make a trellis for them,” Brendan says, smiling widely at Alex as he finishes.

“You really -- ” Alex starts. “You really, like, researched this. Didn’t you?”

“My mom helped,” he says with a shrug. “When I visited last summer I realized I was like, way better at eating vegetables when they were from the garden, and this sounded fun. My mom is way too excited but you know, it’s a good distraction from her worrying about me getting injured every time we talk.”

“I think if I told my mom I was going to plant a garden she’d worry I had a concussion,” Alex responds. Brendan laughs as he pushes himself onto his knees to get the kale seeds.

“That’s ‘cause you’re an asshole, Chucky,” he says. Alex doesn’t bother to refute that, just shrugs and takes the proffered seed packet. Brendan gets the little onion bulbs for himself and then explains to Alex how to plant the seeds -- “you just like, make a little ditch, sort of? And then sprinkle the seeds in there and cover it up, but don’t pack it too densely, like, stuff still has to get down there and whatever” -- and even though Alex feels clumsy in the garden they fall into a comfortable pattern, trading stories when they’re not asking each other questions about the plants. He finishes with the kale before Brendan is done with the onions, so he starts on the carrots without prompting. They spend the whole afternoon like that, wrapped in Habs sweatshirts and old jeans and scarves to protect themselves from the dirt and the 40-degree weather while they talk and plant and water.

At about 4 pm when they’re finally done planting, Alex wipes the little bit of sweat off his forehead and looks over at Brendan, who is predictably standing next to him and beaming. 

“It’s kind of awesome, isn’t it?” he asks proudly.

“It is,” Alex says.

They do end up stretching in the courtyard before they trudge upstairs to take turns in the shower. Brendan feeds him dinner and tells him all about the salad dressings he’s going to learn to make for the garden greens.

\---

Brendan is both more methodical than Alex thought he would be about gardening and exactly as methodical as he expected. He waters and weeds and trims and fertilizes and putters; sometimes over lunch, he’ll launch into what was once completely incomprehensible gibberish about what he thinks he’ll try planting as the days get longer or what he thinks he should try next year, about attempting to foster a pineapple bush in his living room, about collecting herbs and cacti to live indoors year-round. But after he tries to plant arugula (a good just-workable soil plant to sow before the days are long and hot and it gets too much sun; Alex is moderately embarrassed he knows this) and it never germinates, Brendan continues to stubbornly sow arugula over the same area, muttering to himself and working the soil until his hands seem more dirt than skin. It is, Alex thinks, a little like watching roots grow around a poorly placed rock in real time. It reminds him of watching Brendan go after the puck: relentless, foolhardy, stubborn, diligent.

It surprises Brendan more than Alex when it works.

Alex tells him to try an iris in the summer. When Brendan asks him why, Alex finds himself staring pointedly at the corner of the raised bed and shrugging. “It’s like. My birth flower,” he mutters finally. And though that sort of request is ripe with opportunities to chirp, Brendan just beams at him and knocks their shoulders together.

\---

The day the first little seedlings come up, Brendan sends him a picture of each one separately. By the time Alex is done eating dinner, he’s got 13 text messages: eight pictures of little tiny plants, two that are just full of exclamation points, and three complaining that he’s not more excited about their gardening accomplishment full of emoticons he only understands because he’s been texting Brendan for too long.

Alex sends him a selfie giving a thumbs up and the widest smile he can manage. Brendan posts it to Twitter.

\---

“Why do you have so many little plastic bags of greens and shit in your fridge, Gally?” Prusty yells from Brendan’s kitchen during a line-gathering.

“One for you and one for Chucky, plus some for me and some for my neighbor,” Brendan yells back. Alex feels his mouth quirk into a half-smile but doesn’t say anything. Next to him on the couch, Brendan bumps their knees together and grins widely.

“Okay, but _why_ ,” Prusty repeats when he walks back into the living room with three beers and a glint in his eye that usually means someone is about to get chirped, or possibly pulled to the ground and wrestled.

“I have a cool weather garden this year,” Brendan says easily. “And! It’s almost time for the hot weather plants.”

“When do you even have time to garden?” Prusty asks, grin subsiding a little into a confused little frown as he slots himself next to Alex and plucks the remote from his lap.

“Chucky usually helps me on off-days.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah,” Brendan nods eagerly. “It’s fun, right?”

“It’s kind of cool,” Alex agrees less eagerly. He sits on-edge for several prolonged seconds, waiting for Prusty to make a comment, but instead he cracks open his beer and settles on a golf game, because he has the worst taste in sports (hockey excluded, of course) of anyone Alex has ever met.

“You should grow cilantro,” he says finally. “That shit is ridiculously expensive. I’m not that invested in my guacamole, you know?”

“You get paid millions of dollars a year, old man,” Brendan says.

“Fuck that. Grow cilantro.”

He takes the bag of greens home when the game is over, though, and doesn’t make another comment.

\---

Playoffs come and go, but of course in the moment it doesn’t feel like that at all. In the moment it’s all-consuming, rhapsodic and wild, and Alex can hardly see three feet in front of him for the cup in the back of his mind. They get close, they get so close -- but when they lose on home ice, Montreal livid, Alex goes back to his house and sleeps for three days.

On the fourth, Brendan shows up at his front door with a flat of chrysanthemums precariously perched on his hip and gardening gloves and a coffee in his other hand. 

“I bought them for your yard, if you want,” he says with a fragile half-smile, scrabbling for the corner of the flat as it slips away again.

Alex barely manages a smile in return, but he takes the flowers before Brendan can drop them and carries them inside. Then, he changes into a pair of old jeans that already have dirt-worn holes in the knee and throws on his gloves before joining Brendan in the backyard to slowly and methodically scope out the best place for the new plants.

They don’t talk much until the chrysanthemums are planted, watered, and fertilized in a previously-bare corner of the garden. The sky is gray but not foreboding, and its wide sunless expanse keeps them company. When they’ve finished, Brendan leans just a touch against Alex’s side, and Alex feels warmer than he’s felt in weeks. 

“Lunch?” he asks, and the spell’s broken. Brendan keeps up a steady stream of chatter for the next two hours.

\---

After a week of sulking and hanging out with Brendan, playing video games and working out and napping and cooking and gardening, Alex books his tickets back to Russia. He’s not Brendan, at least not yet; his house feels homier and homier as the weeks tick by but it’s still not exactly where he wants to be. He’s been--well, he’s been thinking about how he wants his house to feel, how he feels when he hangs out at Brendan’s, and he’s started trying to fill the space in his living room; gathering shitty airport paperbacks and a red wooly throw for his couch and his own gardening supplies. It helps a little, but Alex always feels a touch homesick no matter where he is. It’s never really alleviated when he goes back to Russia with his parents and Anna to visit his cousins and tromp all around with Nail, but it’s a different ache, at least. And if he can’t have exactly what he wants anywhere -- though he hopes, someday, he’ll have enough of what he wants here in Montreal -- for now he resigns himself to house-hopping and continent-jumping, always chasing home.

“Flying out to Moscow on Monday,” Alex says during lunch on Friday. Brendan pauses for a moment, smile flickering off his face, but he recovers quickly enough.

“I’ll water your plants,” he says easily, and Alex has it on the tip of his tongue to say he can hire someone to do that, or that his maid service would probably do it for a little extra, but he keeps it in.

“That’d be great, B. I’ll get you the spare key,” he says instead, standing up from the table, and the answering smile he gets makes his cheeks tint pink.

\---

Brendan texts him every day when he’s in Russia, which isn’t that unusual. What is unusual is the content of his texts: pictures of Gus, who he still borrows from Gorges when he’s feeling lonely, rolling around in the new communal plot he’s clearing at his building; his lettuce and radicchio in the early summer, then the tomatoes and peppers as the season wears on and the sun gets stronger; Alex’s now-blooming chrysanthemums; the meals Brendan is cooking with the herbs he grows in his kitchen. Alex finds himself looking up things about planting seasons and the hardiest bulbs for Montreal winters and where trees will do best in a good yard and sending them all to Brendan.

One day Nail drags Alex out to help buy a present for his cousin’s birthday. This is actually just a very thinly-veiled excuse to buy another guy Uggs and tell Alex more about how he should wear the pair Nail got for him last year more often, but Nail doesn’t spring that tidbit of information on him until they’re wandering around a shopping district in Moscow. Nail has very firm opinions on Uggs, which Alex knows already; he thinks they’re ugly, but very acceptable in the form of house slippers. That’s just because Nail has two pairs of Ugg slippers, though, and he keeps trying to give them to his teammates in an effort to make them more manly, or at least less chirpable. Alex has heard this all before, before and after receiving his own Uggs, and he surreptitiously pulls out his phone to see if Brendan has responded to his email about possibly planting an apple tree in his backyard.

“[--but really, they can be paired with most pants, except suits. I got in trouble for that last year--hey!]” Nail says, turning a full pout onto Alex when he realizes Alex isn't listening. Before Alex can respond, the impish smirk Nail gets when he's being a dick spreads across his face, and he lunges across Alex to grab his phone, quickly scanning through the conversation he's having with Brendan. 

“[You’re not even talking to a girl?]” he says. “[I’m giving you fashion advice, and you’re ignoring me for your teammate?]”

“[Shut up, give me that,]” Alex hisses, grabbing for his phone.

“‘I planted some clover in your backyard to help the soil out a little. We can do a real garden at your house next spring,” Nail reads in his thick accent, brow furrowing.

“[I said, give me that,]” Alex repeats steadily. Nail levels him with a long stare.

“You live with him now?” he asks in English that’s even worse than usual since he’s so out of practice.

“Jesus, no, just drop it.” Alex shifts from foot to foot somewhat restlessly, a little startled and, he’s sure, blushing like crazy. 

“Is okay with me, you know,” Nail says suddenly, still in English, looking uncertain. 

Alex sighs and holds out his hand. “[I help him garden sometimes,]” is all he says. But he knocks their shoulders together just for a second before they keep walking because, well. Russia is Russia, and Nail is Nail and also probably Alex’s best friend besides Brendan, and it’s nice to know, is all. 

_sounds good_ , he replies to Brendan’s guestimation of where an apple tree would do best in Alex’s yard. He gets a smiley face in return.

\---

_i wanna get some lily bulbs but i think your yard has a better spot for them_ , Brendan texts near the end of Alex’s visit in Moscow.

 _where?_ he responds. Brendan’s text is almost immediate.

_that little side garden right by your driveway? it’s really ugly right now and if we got nice soil it gets light all day. courtyard is a little shady for lilies :/_

_sure. that’s fine. you still gonna plant my iris?_

_yep. lily is my birth flower, so. we’re doing a birthday exchange. that’s your present this year tho hahahaha._

Alex smiles helplessly at his phone until Anna smacks him. “Gross,” she says lightly. “Stop flirting, we’re supposed to go to Abram’s birthday with Nail.”

“Whatever,” he says, pocketing his phone and following her out the door. He only checks his phone once during the party, drunk and almost ready to pull aside someone he doesn’t know and tell them how much he misses Brendan. Brendan has sent him a picture of the sad little patch of dirt next to the driveway with _LILIES!!!! :))))_ written underneath. 

He smiles for the rest of the party, even after Nail chirps him about it.

\---

Alex has lived in so many places--Milwaukee, Milan, St. Petersburg, Minsk--but regardless of where he has tried to make a home, the house he’s always returned to for the best comfort belongs to his dedushka and babushka. It’s right outside of the main drag of Minsk, and for a city without too much plant life it’s always been lush. His dedushka and babushka’s garden is familiar and something he thinks of fondly, but even though he’s spent his whole life drinking tea with his family on the patio he can only think of one plant that has always lived in their yard: bergenias. They have big leaves that have always reminded him a little of cabbage and small purple flowers that look more delicate than their name, and even in the cold of Bulgaria they stay green during the winter. Until he started the whole gardening adventure with Brendan he’s not sure if he would have said he missed bergenias, per se, but now that there are plants in his house he finds himself wondering why he hasn’t asked Brendan about them yet.

But something about going to a nursery in Montreal to get bergenias has sat with Alex wrong since the first time he thought of it at all. Bergenias remind him of his dedushka and babushka, of thick borscht and sneaking salted cucumbers and cabbage while his dad and uncles drank the neighbor’s home-brewed vodka, of guttural words that only ever sound tender in the mouth of a native speaker, of growing up a good Belarusian boy with his good Belarusian family. So just a week before he’s due to head back to Montreal, Alex slaps Nail on the back and says he’ll see him next time he’s out in Edmonton and catches a train to Minsk with Anna. 

His babushka is the big gardener, and he can tell she’s a bit surprised when he takes time out of his schedule to watch her putter around in the garden, her familiar cadence washing over him as he tries to take in her methods with the plants. He asks her about everything in the garden, mostly things he can’t say he’s ever noticed before. There’s a lot of greenery and shrubs, a handful of herbs, a smattering of flowers, and as many bergenias as ever. They chat, sometimes joined by one of his cousins or aunts or uncles or dedushka or Anna or a neighbor he probably knew better before he moved back to North America for good. It’s tranquil, exactly the grounding he’s looking for before starting another non-stop season in the NHL. 

Before he leaves, he asks his babushka for a bergenia starter. The smile she gives him reminds Alex of Anna, and he wonders if smiles run in families like face shapes. His babushka digs up a small plant in a corner of her garden and puts it in a planter he recognizes from years of hanging around in her house. Alex carries it on the plane, and it sits in his lap for the entire ride from Minsk to Montreal. 

When Brendan shows up at his house (after giving him a 16 hour grace period to recover from the flight), Alex gives him the bergenia.

\---

“Play with me,” Brendan whines loudly into Alex’s ear, poking him in the shoulder.

“Augh,” Alex groans, swatting at Brendan blindly with his extra pillow. “Why are you even here.”

“You can’t be on Russian time when practice starts, you’ll be even grumpier than usual,” Brendan insists, apparently taking Alex’s nonverbal response as permission to straddle him and tug on his cheek like a two-year-old demanding attention. Or like Gus demanding belly rubs, if Gus had thumbs.

“Fuck off,” Alex says, giving up on his attempt to hit Brendan and instead pressing his pillow over the top of his bed. 

“Nuh-uh, sleeping beauty. I already turned your coffee pot on and it’s a perfect day to go for a run before we go plant shopping! Nurseries and coffee and running! You’re excited, I can tell,” Brendan says confidently. Alex grunts.

It takes three more minutes of persistent pestering and Brendan physically bringing a cup of coffee to Alex in the bedroom, but eventually he rolls out of bed and into workout shorts. 

“I hate you,” he says vehemently as Brendan takes off at a brisk run the moment they leave the house. 

“No you don’t!” he calls back. “Are you gonna let me win or something? C’mon, Chucky!”

Alex comes. (He wins, too, though Brendan just smacks him lightly on the side of his head and says “Jogging isn’t a _race_ , Chucky.” But it totally is, and Alex beat him, so suck it, Gallagher.)

\---

Two days before a week-long road trip, Brendan plants all of his bulbs in his courtyard with “help” from Alex, which comes in the form of putting on gardening jeans and kneeling across from Brendan while he digs, doing nothing himself. “You’re going to miss the bulb season at your house, Chucky!” Brendan says, elbow-deep in dirt. “I got you some lilies for your side garden, but come on. Bulbs are easy, you should do more than that.”

“I just -- I don’t know, Gally, you have a better idea of where to put plants and stuff than I do,” he replies with a shrug. 

Brendan narrows his eyes and keeps planting. “Tulips,” he says finally. 

“What?”

“You should plant tulips in your front yard. Like a whole bed of them, in front of the boxwood, so your yard looks happier in the spring,” Brendan says. And Alex doesn’t say anything back, just continues to watch Brendan happy-as-a-clam in his garden box while Brendan continues to carry on a mostly one-sided conversation about whether he could plant a tree in the courtyard, but the next day after practice he goes out and buys a whole host of tulip bulbs in a variety of colors. He still doesn’t say anything to Brendan after he plants them and the lilies Brendan gave him, but the first time he comes by after the road trip Brendan pokes around Alex’s yard without him. When he lets himself in, he’s beaming.

“What, you win the lottery or something?” Alex says brusquely, pouring him a cup of decaf. Brendan just smiles wider.

“You planted tulips,” he says happily. 

“Well,” Alex says, pausing. “Yeah.”

Brendan keeps smiling. He smiles all through breakfast.

\---

There’s not much to do for a small garden in November and December and January, at least not in Montreal where the ground won’t even think about thawing until late February. This is probably a good thing, seeing as Alex and Brendan are both incredibly busy. But sometimes, when Brendan is passed out on Alex’s shoulder on the plane, he misses the conversations they had about plants last spring and while Alex was in Russia. Even though they’re spending just as much time together as they always have, something is… different. They can’t be distant, they’re not distant in any sense of the word, it’s just -- Alex can’t put his finger on it. And no matter how much time he spends looking at his frozen yard while he pushes himself for an extra workout on his bike, he still can’t figure it out, can’t find a word for it in English or Russian or even Italian. It doesn’t make sense to him, but Alex has a feeling it’s important.

He relays this to Anna and gets a two-word email in response: _you idiot_. 

Still, he’s sort of relieved when the weather starts to get a degree or two warmer. It means spring is coming, which means there will be plenty of plants to talk about again. The thought sits in his chest, warmer than any temperature jump could be.

\---

When Brendan starts planting his early spring garden, he shows up at Alex’s house one morning with a bag of nice new soil, fertilizer from his own compost, gloves, a shovel, and a small lilac bush. He doesn’t even wake Alex; it’s not until he gets up to make himself breakfast that he sees Brendan kneeling out there in the dirt in his small backyard among the ferns he never pays any mind to.

“What’re you doing?” he asks as he opens the door, leaning against it and sipping on his coffee.

“Planting you some lilacs,” Brendan says easily. “Go get me some coffee and put on jeans, or something. Next off-day I’ll bring over some other plants to replace the ugly fucking ferns you’re about to help me tear out.”

“Lilacs,” Alex says, taking a sip of coffee. He watches at Brendan studying the ferns with a look of intense concentration, scratching the back of his neck with a trowel. “Huh.”

“Alex,” Brendan says, tone flat.

“Yeah.”

“Pants.”

“Right.”

When Alex returns to the garden freshly clothed in what he’s come to think of as his gardening jeans and his thickest old Sarnia sweatshirt, Brendan is digging. He’s been at it long enough that the Montreal chill isn’t bothering him anymore, apparently, so he’s chucked his sweatshirt onto Alex’s lawn in favor of his long-sleeved black shirt. Alex has spent years playing hockey with Brendan, years hanging out with him, and plenty of time in the last few months gardening with him; he’s used to the way Brendan looks. But seeing him in his gardening garb in Alex’s backyard -- Brendan just looks more like Brendan than he ever has before. 

Or maybe, stupid and 80s teen movie as it is, Alex is just seeing him better.

\---

When spring is in full force, Alex’s tulips pop up in hues of red and pink and yellow. It becomes part of his routine, after a while: on his way home from practice, he sits in his car and waits for his last song to finish and looks at them, admiring how much livelier and, more importantly, lived in they make his house look. Because being a professional hockey player makes his schedule weird, Alex often grabs lunch on his way home or at a teammate’s house; on the days he does make himself lunch in his own house, though, he’ll almost always stand at his kitchen island and look out into his yard. It’s a big space, because though his place is mid-sized for a well-paid hockey player making his first home purchase, he did buy it thinking about permanence. This house -- not just the house, but Montreal -- is where he wants to make a home and, someday, a family of his own.

He didn’t want for much growing up, but he did sometimes ache for an anchor. He and his family followed his dad’s hockey career across two continents and four countries, learned English and Italian for his dream, and adapted to making and losing friends easily. None of them regret it, not really, but Alex wants his someday family to be attached to a _place_ in a way his was never attached to anything but each other. So when he committed to Montreal for the long term, he planned ahead: Alex has room for one or two kids the way the house is arranged now, and the yard is big enough that he’ll be able to freeze a little ice rink for them in the winter. But since he never thought much about the yard aside from that, it’s still fairly innocuous. In a garden that’s otherwise uninspired shades of green, the lilacs and chrysanthemums shine. Whenever Alex looks at them, he smiles helplessly and thinks of Brendan. 

He thinks of Brendan a lot these days, though Alex supposes he has always spent more time than is perhaps normal thinking about Brendan. For most of his life, Alex has had to make his places in people. His mom and dad and Anna are home to him more than any house they ever lived in, and Nail and Alex still use each other as cures for homesickness, even from a distance. This tendency to settle in other peoples’ skins rather than the cities he’s lived in followed him to Montreal, where the unfamiliar French and harsh press and grey sky felt unwelcoming; though he’s never told him this, Brendan is why Alex feels at home in Montreal. It’s hard for him to loosen up, to turn off the hockey, to chirp without sounding like an asshole or be chirped without acting like one. But Brendan makes it easy, and he has since the moment they met.

Nothing much has come easy to Alex except hockey, and that he works for singlemindedly and relentlessly. Brendan isn’t just easy, though; he’s natural. He fits into every nook and cranny Alex never noticed was empty in his life until Brendan filled them with brightness. Everything he touches comes to life. His is the only smile Alex can tolerate when he’s pulled into his own head. Alex starts nearly every day with a text from Brendan and finishes it by looking at the picture of the two of them on his bedside table beside the pictures of his family.

Alex doesn’t remember how he filled the rhythm in his days before Brendan. He doesn’t want to. The way he feels about Brendan now, it’s been sneaking up on him for months or years. It feels big and uneasy in his chest and utterly unfamiliar to top it off, and Alex knows it isn’t just buddies. The way he feels about Brendan is not the way he feels about Prusty or Nail. And it terrifies him, makes him think about pulling away every time Brendan pulls him in, makes him second guess every casual touch and flippant chirp, makes him pause before he texts Brendan good morning. But no matter how much his self-preservation instincts scream at him to back away from this before he can’t anymore, Alex just… can’t. Already, he can’t. He’s too late. He doesn’t want to, and Brendan doesn’t seem to want him to, either. 

Alex is tired of overthinking things. He’s tired of feeling half-home in Montreal. He’s tired of having _almost_ with Brendan. 

He takes a picture of the lilac bush from his kitchen window and sends it to Brendan.

\---

After the lilies go into full bloom at Alex’s house Brendan spends more and more time there, which Alex has a hard time figuring out. It’s true that his house has felt more and more homey in the last few months, and it’s true that more of Brendan’s stuff has migrated over here than Alex maybe consciously realized, but Brendan’s apartment still feels best to Alex -- fuller, happier, more lived-in, whereas Alex’s still looks like he’s playing house badly rather than actually living in it. Plus, Brendan’s little garden is way better than what they’re just starting to really get into in Alex’s yard. Nowadays, the courtyard in Brendan’s building is actually sort of… beautiful.

It’s so beautiful, actually, and Alex somehow got himself so attached to it, that he finds himself getting all wistful thinking about working with Brendan is his coutyard garden. It’s amazingly idiotic. There’s being sort of stupid about your best friend, and then there’s being a complete fucking non. Alex can invite himself over to Brendan’s apartment any damn time he pleases, and Brendan would be absolutely thrilled if he decided he wanted to garden while he was there.

So on his way back to his house after practice one day in early spring, Alex takes a wrong turn out of the parking lot and lets himself meander over to Brendan’s place. When he calls Brendan to tell him he’s in the courtyard and Brendan should make himself useful down there with him, the familiar sound of Brendan’s pleased laughter is even better than Montreal robins after a long winter.

\---

They thrash the Bruins a few weeks later and go out to celebrate, even the married guys, though they sit in a corner with a sort of hunted look and leave before 11pm. Carey is, of course, the exception, and he holds court with PK in the middle of their booth well past midnight. The two of them down beers and chirp whoever gets close enough to attract their attention, everyone taking their mildly drunken harassment with ease that only comes with practice -- both with hockey players in general and PK and Carey in particular. Prusty’s on Alex’s right, elbowing him in the ribs when he gestures wildly to illustrate his increasingly elaborated stories and passing him whatever Gorges orders for the table at the beginning of the night and whatever he pleases toward the end of it. To Alex’s left Patches passes Brendan shot after shot of tequila, decision-making skills totally lost with only an optional skate tomorrow. Brendan’s downing his drinks with a sort of giddy joy having scored the game winner, and Alex is feeling pleased and buzzed, though not as pleased or buzzed as Brendan.

Mostly, he knows this because Brendan keeps trying to sit on his lap. 

It’s not strictly unusual behavior, but usually Brendan will try to plant himself on Alex’s lap once for a laugh and then clear out. Tonight he comes back every fifteen minutes or so, always looking drunk and happy and just a _touch_ nervy, the touch small enough that Alex thinks he and maybe Prusty are the only ones who notice. Every time Alex lets him sit precariously on his thigh for a moment before pushing him off, allowing his arm linger on Brendan’s back a little longer each time he disposes of him in his proper spot on the bench. For the first few times Brendan gets an exaggerated pout on his face, mostly for show, and whines that Alex is no fun before going back to his drink and talking raucously with whoever seems the most excited to listen. But the fifth time Alex shoves Brendan off his lap Brendan shoots him a look that’s at least 10% pure determination, and Alex realizes he’s maybe misjudged something, that maybe this isn’t a game. Maybe it wasn’t ever a game and Alex is just cluing into that now, three drinks into the evening and years into the most intimate friendship he’s ever had.

By 12:30 most of the team has cleared out, but Brendan is still slotted next to Alex on the bench as close as he can get away with, which is way closer than he’d be able to get away with if either of them were sober. PK and Carey are starting to head toward the door, but Brendan is squirrely next to Alex and not looking like he’s going to leave the bar anytime soon and Alex -- Alex is fine where he is. He’s always fine when he’s with Brendan, and part of him thought that was one-sided, even if he recognized that was his anxiety talking more than his brain. But tonight, with Brendan’s easy camaraderie even when he could be getting attention from anyone on the team -- anyone in the entire bar -- that he pleased, Brendan is leaning on Alex and laughing into Alex’s shoulders whenever Prusty makes a stupid joke and Alex feels settled. Drunk, sure, but no less settled, no less even and solid in his skin, and no less sure that no matter his flaws, Brendan is here for him.

Every time another guy leaves, Alex nudges Brendan asks him if he wants to leave, and Brendan shakes his head aggressively and launches into another story everyone has already heard about the game or Alex or the garden or his disastrous first year away from home. He’s had his hand on Alex’s leg for almost an hour now, sweaty and twitchy and weirdly comforting, and Alex finds himself looking out into the bar blankly and thinking about Brendan and why he’s being so touchy. It takes him a solid beer to realize Brendan actually isn’t being that much more touchy than usual, only a little bit more insistent about it. It takes him another beer to think to himself that he doesn’t mind Brendan being touchy, that he actually likes it, that it makes him feel pleased somewhere low in his belly. One beer after that, he pulls Brendan along with him when he gets up to grab water for the lingering two or three guys at their booth. Brendan plasters himself to his side.

“You know I’m, like,” Brendan slurs against him, pressed up to Alex’s chest and looking up with him with wide, sincere, drunk eyes, “I’m just. I’m fucking gone for you, you know?”

Somewhere, Alex thinks this should surprise him. He only pieced everything together tonight with alcohol to keep him from freaking out about it, but he looks at Brendan, bulky and sweaty and determined and soft and pliant in all the places that matter, and it seems inevitable that two people who’ve so carefully grown into and around each other would grow into this, into the promise in Brendan’s eyes that isn’t so much heated as it is warm and familiar.

“Yeah, Gally,” Alex answers, and Brendan goes loose and limp and his expression flits between happy and devastated.

“Yeah?” he asks, pushing his face into Alex’s neck. Alex runs his hand over the damp hair at the base of Brendan’s skull and hugs him properly with his free arm, and he feels Brendan relax into him like he’s been waiting all night for Alex to get his shit together and touch him back like he means it.

“Let’s go home,” Alex says, and Brendan sticks his hand into the pocket of Alex’s jacket and comes willingly.

In the cab he stays clinging to Alex, and Alex slings an arm over his shoulder and pushes Brendan’s hair off his forehead. Brendan doesn’t say anything, but he crowds into Alex as much as he can manage; Alex wishes ardently that he were sober enough to drive. He wants to reassure Brendan that it’s okay because he’s sniffling every few minutes and clutching at him like someone is going to take Alex away, or maybe like he thinks Alex is going to take himself away. There are a lot of things Alex isn’t sure about -- including what, exactly, his feelings about Brendan _are_ beyond not-just-buddies -- but he’s knows he won’t leave him. Not voluntarily. He knows it as well as he knows he’ll lose the words to tell him that soon, but Brendan’s the one made for talking and causing scenes. Alex isn’t drunk enough to find words for Brendan where someone else might hear. 

When they get dropped off at Alex’s house, Alex pushes Brendan into the master bathroom and gets ready for bed in the guest bathroom. After he brushes his teeth and splashes a bit of water on his sweaty face he goes to his bedroom to find Brendan passed out gracelessly on his bed, shoes off and belt undone but shirt still buttoned. Part of him registers that Brendan looks like an idiot, but mostly he feels stupidly fond and gentle in a way that he knows isn’t entirely the alcohol. It’s largely Brendan, and it’s there all the time -- just, with a few less shots of vodka in him it’s easier to ignore.

Alex stares at him for a moment, then changes into shorts and a worn Habs shirt and gets under the covers next to him. He listens to Brendan’s even breathing until he falls asleep, thinking about the way Brendan looked when he said he was gone for him. It should keep him up, he thinks absently, but it doesn’t; he falls asleep between one breath and the next moments after he lays down. In his dreams, Brendan leads him by the hand through a maze of gardenias, laughing just ahead of him.

\---

In the morning, Brendan looks both sheepish and hung over as he quickly disentangles himself from Alex, so Alex makes him coffee and diet-breaking bacon. It’s silent as they eat, and Brendan seems tense in a way that Alex associates with playoffs or bad talks with his mom, so he throws their dishes into the sink and then tells him to get into the car. Brendan doesn’t even ask him where they’re going until they take a turn toward the outskirts of Montreal, looking at Alex sideways.

“I decided I wanted that apple tree,” Alex says with a shrug, and Brendan relaxes for the first time since he woke up.

Alex drives them to a nursery neither of them have been to before, one he’s visited the website of more times than he’s willing to admit. It’s out of the way and quiet when they get there, owned by an older couple who let their golden retriever wander around the grounds and beg for attention from the customers. It’s Quebec, so they get recognized, but the old man who owns the place and shows them to a small collection of apple and pear trees just nods solemnly at them and says they’re playing well right now, no matter what the press is saying. It’s nice; the whole place is nice, peaceful. Alex isn’t always looking directly at Brendan and Brendan isn’t always in his line of vision, but even when they wander away from each other he can feel Brendan’s presence, stable and weighty and comforting even with the lingering bit of tension between them. 

“What about this one?” Brendan calls from somewhere on his right, and Alex follows his voice to find Brendan standing by a sapling that’s about four feet tall, leaves still in buds and looking a little like the apple version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Alex smiles -- first at the little tree and then, bigger, at Brendan -- and nods. 

“It’s perfect, B,” he says, and Brendan smiles small and earnest.

When the owner offers to help them carry the apple tree to the car after they drag the tree to the check out and pay, Alex declines and tosses Brendan the car keys. He lifts the sapling into the car himself and waves back at the older couple before he closes the trunk and climbs into the driver’s seat. They’re about halfway back to Alex’s house when Brendan reaches over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, Alex,” he says quietly, and removes his hand quickly. Alex turns to him briefly to smile and keeps driving.

They’ve had the mostly-sunny corner for the apple tree picked out since Alex was in Russia like a promise, and as soon as Alex pulls up at his house Brendan gets out of the car and heads toward the sapling in the trunk. Alex goes to fetch his big shovel and change; when he goes to the backyard, Brendan is standing with the tree, shy smile on his face and looking like someone who belongs in Alex’s backyard. The two of them take turns digging a two-foot deep hole, concentrating on the task singularly. It’s been a quiet day, but the further into the dirt he gets the more relaxed Brendan looks; by the time they lower the sapling into the dirt he’s standing totally loose with a small grin on his face, and Alex mentally pats himself on the back. As they start piling the dirt back down around the tree and packing it in lightly, Brendan stands up straight and stretches.

“It’ll do well here,” he says thoughtfully. “Won’t get in the way of the lilac bush.” 

Alex brushes his elbow against Brendan’s and his smile gets a little bigger, a little more certain, and Alex isn’t ready. But for the first time, he thinks he’s sure. He’s sure how he feels about the way Brendan’s lips looked fitting around the words “gone for you,” he’s sure how he feels about the way they play hockey together, he’s sure how he feels about the way they’ve grown into and around each other. He’s not ready. He will be, though. And no matter what other people say about Brendan being anything but patient, anything but subtle, Brendan’s fingers linger on Alex’s arm for just a second that day as he leaves, and Alex knows he gets it.

\---

“I found one!” Brendan yells happily, standing up with a clover in his hand, arms thrust straight up in triumph.

“What?” Alex asks, wiping his forehead of sweat while he digs up his patch. 

“A four-leaf clover,” Brendan says, grin wide.

“Lucky you,” Alex says. He’s going for sarcastic but he misses, laughing fondly at Brendan and wiping the sweat off his forehead. 

“I think this means I get to make a wish.”

“That’s for dandelions, Gally,” Alex says, raising an eyebrow at him. 

“For four-leaf clovers too,” Brendan insists, and he concentrates on the clover with an intensity that reminds Alex a little of Brendan focusing on the puck during a shootout. The image startles a laugh out of him, but Brendan waves his hand at him in a shushing gesture.

“What’d you wish for?” Alex asks as Brendan nods, satisfied, and sticks the clover in his pocket.

“That’s not how wishing works, Chucky. Didn’t you have a childhood at all?” Alex frowns and opens his mouth to retort, but Brendan presses on. “Anyway, the clovers know,” he says, in a whisper and wearing a stupid playful smirk.

“Clover is sentient now?” Alex asks, and Brendan snorts a little and falls silent, though the smirk is still on his face. 

“I’ve been asking them for this wish since I started gardening,” he says after a moment. He looks pointedly at Alex, smirk turning into a fonder, shyer smile. Alex blushes, wiping at his forehead again in a futile attempt to hide it, and just a few seconds later the moment has passed. It stays on Alex’s mind all that day, though, and he thinks of Brendan’s second smile that night as he’s falling asleep, thinking about what he would wish for, given the chance. 

Probably, he thinks as he’s drifting off, he’d wish for something he’s already been promised.

\---

Alex is sure, and nothing changes. Nothing slots into place. The sky doesn’t look more blue. Being around Brendan isn’t harder or more fraught. He doesn’t lose sleep. He’s still got a short temper and even on his best days he’s competitive enough that it’s a joke on a professional sports team. He doesn’t get better at hockey, and he doesn’t get worse. He just knows every time he looks at Brendan that this is where they’re supposed to be, and that with a little luck and a lot of work they’ll stay this way. It’s a little like hockey, which is a little like gardening, which is a little like what his mom taught him when he was growing up and they had to move all the time: love and work and work and love, but hold your loves close and work on them, too.

Alex loves Brendan, and even though it’s maybe a little headstrong and stupid, he’s not afraid. It feels natural. It feels like every other day was leading here, and Alex just realized it.

\---

Brendan doesn’t even have the grace to look surprised the first time Alex kisses him. They’re sitting in Alex’s kitchen with a diet-approved lunch in front of them and Brendan is looking out at the garden he’s been slowly putting into his backyard for over a year and a half, calm and self-satisfied. Alex isn’t a kid anymore, he’s not so afraid anymore: he can put words to what Brendan has done. Brendan is the root holding Alex’s soil together, or Alex is the soil anchoring Brendan’s root, and either way it’s exactly as it was before. He’s rooted, and he’s rooted with Alex, and Alex has let him. Will continue to let him. Can’t imagine ever stopping him.

“Hey,” Alex says softly, putting one of his hands on Brendan’s and rubbing his thumb slowly across it. 

“Hey,” Brendan says back. And Alex closes the distance between them, pressing his lips carefully and chastely to Brendan’s. Brendan smiles, tangles their fingers together, and goes back in, enthusiastic and happy. When Alex pulls back Brendan is flushed and pleased and his face is framed by the lilac bushes they planted together.

“I’m gone for you, too.” Alex says.

“Yeah, Chucky,” Brendan says. And he smiles.


End file.
